Billy Givens Watches Riverwalk Sink

Easton's controversial Riverwalk project has finally taken a hike, but not before $1.2 million in public funding has been flushed down the toilet and into the Delaware. Originally conceived as seven stories of condominiums, a bus terminal, retail shops and a parking deck, it remains a parking lot located in a flood zone.

Last night, Northampton County Council introduced an ordinance to reacquire that sinkhole-infested parking lot for the $595 thousand it received when former County Exec Glenn Reibman decided to sell it. It made no difference to him that the parking lot was being used by county workers at the adjacent Governor Wolf building.

Amazingly, this parking lot was also in a KOZ, and that was enough to draw the Lehigh Valley's original blogger, Billy Givens, out of retirement. He wanted to see for himself what was happening.

Before Billy discovered the Internet, he regularly regaled passers by in the Easton circle with a bullhorn his daughter gave him as a birthday gift. He littered offices everywhere with daily editions of his Billy Bytes newsletter, using a mimeograph machine from some office downtown. He hated our local newspapers, which he called The Excess Times and Morning Call Girl. They were mouthpieces and whores for local business bigwigs. Naturally, he was rewarded by being named a Bill White Hall of Famer. But he was brash. I once had to pull him out of the street during an antiwar demonstration when he got into a name-calling contest with a motorcycle gang member. Mayor Sal Panto had to persuade a police captain from locking him up. He's spent years taking "chunks out of those who hold themselves up as models of probity." That includes me.

Two years ago, after I deleted a few of his off-topic rants, he sent me an email entitled "Bernie O'Hare, Please Stay Off Your Bicycle, Even If Your Ass Is As Wide As You Are Tall." He then unloaded on me and, just for the hell of it, included Easton's college hill elite.

I know you're running away from me, but you're not going to be able to hide forever.

Up here in Easton's silk-stocking neighborhood of College Hill, where I live with my blue-blooded, Brahmin neighbors like Phil Mitman, Danny Cohen, and Sandy Woodring, they have their noses stuck so far up the ass of Lafayette College that if it made an abrupt left or right turn without signaling it would break their noses.

I'm from Alabama, the home of former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, who used to say of his opponents in the ring: "You can get on your bicycle and run, but you can't hide."

Get the idea? Billy received a warm reception from Northampton County Council last night, which more than once had a deputy sheriff escort him from the podium. .

During an executive session, he posed for this picture with moi, and as you can see, we both know the bloggers' salute.

Two miserable bastards.